August 12, 2001

It was about 6:00 p.m. on a dead Sunday evening. I had been to an NMRA Board meeting in the afternoon and I had crashed on the couch and was barely with it when the phone rang. It's funny, but being unemployed at the moment, I haven't done any train chasing at all this summer. Ah, well, it was Bob Trueblood wanting to know if I was still interested in 'Open Loads' on flatcars. "Yeah," I mumbled. What and where?" "Large transformers, maybe." Bob wasn't exactly sure what they were he said, but they were on four heavy duty and depressed center flats and they were parked on the main over the Main Street viaduct at South Anderson Yard with no power. (He could only have seen all of that from the south side of the viaduct as the north is pretty well obscured by trees and underbrush.)

I debated on waiting until after supper, but then I thought about them being on the main. I picked up my digital camera and told Lynn that I'd be back in about 10 minutes. It's only a couple of minutes drive to an access road at that point and after all, how long could I be?

My head began to clear as I saw one of the cars through trees. Of course the sun was against me. It almost always is so I have learned to go for the shots that I CAN get and not worry about the ones that I can't. What we have is a unit, an idler, another unit, another idler and two transformers on depressed center flats. With that, enjoy the photos.

Click on the small photo to see the larger one...

Oh, yes, the cars were without power because two of the three man crew had pulled down the track to pick up another engine. But why leave the cars here? The third man slipped down to Frazer's Dairy Maid and picked up lunch for them while the other two went to get the loco. When they returned, they hooked up and were on their way.